Fiona Pardington

Ahead of her 2026 Venice Biennale presentation, one of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s foremost photographers, Fiona Pardington, presents her debut solo exhibition with 1301SW Sydney. 

Each carefully curated composition in this exhibition draws from a personal lexicon of meanings: found objects and rediscovered family heirlooms that speak directly to Pardington’s whakapapa/genealogy, or native and invasive botanical species that carry the weight of colonialism. Objects once associated with death and absence are reanimated with reverence and care, their individual histories revealed through the precise arrangement of the photograph, a practice of breathing life back into that which might otherwise fade into obscurity. 

Continuing Pardington’s distinguishing themes of emotion and affect, these works present an eloquent dialogue between beauty and transience. With a sense of both opulence and inevitable decay, she draws on the traditions of Vanitas or Memento Mori paintings, demonstrated through her mastery over both darkroom analogue and digital photography techniques. Light and colour are manipulated to evoke the painterly precision of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro and the velvety surface of Dutch still-life compositions, inviting a lingering gaze that conjures an emotional resonance of memory, longing, mourning, and sensuality.